A few more Gogarth new routes from early in the summer, and some absolute gems. Combined Energy takes a line scouted out by the insatiable McHaffie of course, I'm too lazy to go looking for these things. Combined Engery is in a zawn reached by walking north from Porth Dafarch, next to another route called Fishura. It’s incredibly steep, very loose, almost certain to be wet and, of course, amazing. We had a good tag-team effort going on with each of us pushing a bit higher and placing some gear before getting too pumped to carry on and falling off. Or a hold would break and we’d fall off.
A day later we had all the gear in and had managed to partially dry some of the holds. Caff went for it and managed it, but without making it look easy.. He is fitter, stronger, more skilful, and braver than me, but he had Brexit on his mind so don’t think he was performing at his best. My go went fairly well, I managed to find a few rests Caff didn’t use, or didn’t need. I arrived at a very good shake out just below the top but couldn’t recover anything I was too far gone. Anything could have happened on those last few moves, but I managed to top out feeling like I was going to puke.
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| Combined Energy takes the central pillar |
Divided Britain, E7 6b ***
Being a big fan of knee bars, I particularly enjoyed this new route. I was very sceptical that it was worthwhile looking at this thing as it appeared to be horizontal choss. Geroge Smith had tried it apparently, and rumours were that it was going to be very tough, in the region of f8b. It wasn’t actually very chossy and it had plenty of cracks to foot jam or knee bar in, so you were rarely hanging off your arms. This was a relief as I would experience a terminal pump in seconds hanging off my arms on this angle. It was, and usually will be unfortunately, very damp and took some drying.
After putting in the gear and drying some of the holds, we both led it first ‘redpoint’. An exceptional route that deserves to become a classic, especially as there is loads of good gear and the rock quality is good too. It has seen a few repeats already I think.
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| Resting on Divided Britain |
